Sympathy for the devil: On Compassion for Total Jerks

You're standing in line for tickets to a concert. Some guy in sunglasses wedges himself into line right in front of you. You're furious. Someone behind you sees your reaction and says, "Relax. He's blind. He doesn't know what he's doing." You suddenly feel ashamed. But then someone else in line says, "He's not blind. I've seen him here before. He pretends he's blind so he can cut in line." Your fury surges again. Someone else in line says, "Yeah, he's pretending—but I've known his family for years. He can't help it. He's a psychopath."

Psychopathy is a disease that doesn't look like a disease. It's easily mistaken for unfettered inconsiderateness. Our ambivalent reaction to it, combining sympathy and rage, reveals a fundamental tension in our beliefs about justice. We hold people responsible for their actions, when technically speaking they aren't. You didn't make you. You didn't pick every part of your personality from some catalog. And yet you'll nonetheless pay the price and reap the rewards that come from being you. It's exculpation without exoneration-technically you can be assigned no guilt for being you (you're exculpated), but that does not free you from responsibility for being you (you're not exonerated).

What do you do about the guy in line? Well, exculpation without exoneration, it's not his fault—but he'll pay anyway. You force him to the back of the line. And suppose someone asks, "How can you do that to someone whose actions are not under his control? You can say, "Easy. My actions aren't under my control either. I didn't choose to become someone who prosecutes justice any more than he chose to be someone who violates it."

As Kurt Vonnegut put it:We do doodly doWhat we must muddly mustMuddly do muddly doUntil we bust bodily bust.

Yes, everybody is doing what comes naturally. It's all good, or anyway, it is what it is.

And that's true at the grandest of all scales. Stepping back from this life and time, looking at the great earth spinning in its orbit, we can see all of nature's relations, the predators and the prey, the exploiters and the exploited, and say, "It's all good."

But we don't live at that scale. We live within our sense of justice. At this scale we can't simply forgive all cruelty. "Yes, well, that axe murderer killed my dearest loved ones, but after all, he couldn't help it, poor thing." Practically speaking, we all wonder sometimes whether to show sympathy for the devil.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that humans are greedy, competitive, and dangerous, and at the root of this aggressive behavior is fear. Yes, fear-fear in each of us that we won't have enough, fear arising in response to our fragility. The meanest among us is at core a frail, timid creature running scared.

Stopping to reflect, it's not hard to feel sorry for anyone and everyone. We all know we ourselves are going to die. Even the nastiest gangsters are stuck with the unfortunate predicament of life, caring for and loving things that will inevitably be taken from them.

Well, sympathy for them; sympathy for ourselves. No one deserves special accommodation, or all of us do, which makes it not special. If we're all fearful and prone to lash out, then it's a level playing field.

But, more realistically, there are degrees of fear, and degrees of translating fear into Hobbesian nastiness. Suppose you're in a close relationship with someone who seems especially mean, and therefore (according to Hobbes) especially fearful, much more so than you, which makes you feel both sorry for him and incensed at him, because he indulges in behaviors you would not (or is it need not?) indulge in yourself.

Here you're really torn, half-sympathetic, half-vengeful; half selfless, half self-protective. And he's no help. He won't admit his meanness originates in fear. He practically directs you to treat him as a nasty SOB. Half of you wants to take him at his word. And half of you thinks his denial is all the more sign that he's afraid. And what do you do with the fearful? Well, you shouldn't fight them, should you? That only stirs greater fear.

Will he soften with your kindness? If so, your kindness will have proven worth it. If not, your kindness will only encourage him to be that much meaner to you. But if instead of showing kindness you draw the line and fight back, showing him he can't push you around, he might back down—or you might provoke even more fear, making him that much meaner.

This is not an uncommon situation. We feel some combination of compassion for and self-protection against people we deem to be damaged in ways that make them especially abrasive. This predicament is what first got me thinking about tough judgment calls, situations in which you can't tell which of two things to do and can't do both because they undermine each other (see ACIDs).

"Indulgent or handicapped" was the way the question framed itself. I was living with someone whose offenses seemed to demonstrate either self-indulgence on one hand or a handicap on the other. My gut said, if he is a lazy devil I should push him more. But it also said, if he is handicapped I should sympathize with and accommodate him more.

I think there's no easy complete answer. Yes, sometimes you can lovingly push, or accommodate without lowering your standards. But there's never complete compatibility between polar opposite strategies. Show sympathy for the devil or beat the devil. You can't do both at once. And oscillating between pushing and accommodating really doesn't work. That's what parents do when they get forceful and then apologetic for being so forceful, and then angry about having been so apologetic (see Sorrytaliatory Cycle).

So we place bets on when to accommodate and when to push. And often enough we guess right, but that doesn't make the guessing any easier-and it doesn't eliminate the times we wish we hadn't guessed wrong.

We should be compassionate when we guess wrong. And compassionate for others when they guess wrong, too. That is, if getting compassionate like that is something we can do doodly do.

there are those, too. And for those people, if they are hurting others because they won't face their own demons or parts of themselves they deny or reject, then I think those they are hurting due to this are not obliged to tolerate or fix them, take responsibility for their behavior, what's behind it, or the damage it causes.

Compassion is wonderful but it cannot be a substitute for personal responsibility.

For these self-indulgent folks, their "handicap" is their inability to face themselves which results in abusive behavior and hurting other people because it's all GOING to come out somewhere/somehow AT somebody - usually those closest to them but sometimes, others.

In their case, by "self-indulgent" I mean their penchant for expecting others to be responsible for or to tolerate their behavior and I also mean their refusal to deal with the underlying issues beneath it.

Further indulging them by enabling their behavior improves nothing for them or anyone else.

I assert that for these types who are thusly "handicapped", the TRULY compassionate thing to do for both them and their unfortunate targets is simply to NOT enable or tolerate their behavior particularly in intimate relationships and maybe in other venues as well.

OK, so sometimes it IS difficult to discern whether a person is really blind or just pretending to be, or if he simply refuses to see -- or if a person's anger has its basis in fear and/or shame or if they operate on some conscienceless need to control other people and get their own way at any cost, or all of the above.

We can't do fMRI's, hearing, and vision tests on everyone walking the planet. At some point, we have to simply do our best to discern who (or what) is responsible for the behavior of "jerks".

It's a slip-slidey hillside full of warning signs about being careful who and what you embrace by taking responsibility (or blame) for other people's behavior, lest your own become as much of a problem for them, yourself, and for society as theirs is.

This is a great article. I have learned such patients now that i understand mental illness and it's cousins. These mental disorders affect their emotions which no longer effect mine now that i see it. Sincerely,David

In my career, I have to accommodate jerks a lot. Kill em with kindness: works ev'ry time. It might not solve every dilemma, but it will piss em off enough to make it worth the effort so that they may think twice next time they are feeling inconsiderate. This is not the same thing as compassion because I don't think we should be giving these idiots too much sympathy because in most cases they have been acting this way for so long that nothing is going to stop them, but you can trip them up in this easy and amusing way and save your sympathy cause there sure are plenty who deserve it.

some of us may be completely unaware at the time of our impact on others because we would be responding to both vast and huge entirely interior things mixing weirdly with exterior signals, cues, or subtext which you folks won't admit, will you. you won't admit the lying games you play, the spin you put on us, the subtle secret sabotages you engage, your own deviances and dishonesties that come out in "totally socially acceptable" ways that NO ONE will recognize but those of US who CAN see through your crap while you've got everyone else snowed and on your side because OUR outward "behavior" looks as if "worse" than yours, when in reality YOURS would be more destructive for its levels of outright deception, admit it!!!

and some of us may be in a place where we cannot control ourselves even if we happen to be aware in the moment that what we may be doing may not be healthy or good (for us or anyone else). and some of us just MIGHT be flippin' scared of that, but have nowhere to go with it, because in times past when we have tried to be vulnerable to others we have been kicked in the f*cking face over it. so before passing blanket judgment on whether we should be given compassion vs. whether we should be treated like narcissistic self-indulging assh*les during those times we do things that impact you negatively, you MIGHT want to stop and consider these factors. some of us can't do a freaking thing about it because secular psych hasn't evolved enough to meet our needs and the religious world has given up on us and written us off as lost causes and we sure as hell cannot "fix" ourselves, having no control and living in 24/7 dissociation.

if you have no compassion fair enough -- we could not guarantee having any when the tables get turned (and they do -- every last one of you healthy sods can be just as capable IF NOT MORE of assinine behavior AND self-exonerating denial on top of it -- at least we ferals ADMIT what we be!!) but for crying out loud do NOT judge us as having miraculous powers of insight and control that we don't have. at least see our affliction and our plight. and thank god or whatever YOU believe in that YOU don't have to be exhausted and worn thin 24/7 JUST trying to keep yourself from going SO far off the edge that you end up with a prison sentence.

some of us may be completely unaware at the time of our impact on others because we would be responding to both vast and huge entirely interior things mixing weirdly with exterior signals, cues, or subtext which you folks won't admit, will you. you won't admit the lying games you play, the spin you put on us, the subtle secret sabotages you engage, your own deviances and dishonesties that come out in "totally socially acceptable" ways that NO ONE will recognize but those of US who CAN see through your crap while you've got everyone else snowed and on your side because OUR outward "behavior" looks as if "worse" than yours, when in reality YOURS would be more destructive for its levels of outright deception, admit it!!!

and some of us may be in a place where we cannot control ourselves even if we happen to be aware in the moment that what we may be doing may not be healthy or good (for us or anyone else). and some of us just MIGHT be flippin' scared of that, but have nowhere to go with it, because in times past when we have tried to be vulnerable to others we have been kicked in the f*cking face over it. so before passing blanket judgment on whether we should be given compassion vs. whether we should be treated like narcissistic self-indulging assh*les during those times we do things that impact you negatively, you MIGHT want to stop and consider these factors. some of us can't do a freaking thing about it because secular psych hasn't evolved enough to meet our needs and the religious world has given up on us and written us off as lost causes and we sure as hell cannot "fix" ourselves, having no control and living in 24/7 dissociation.

if you have no compassion fair enough -- we could not guarantee having any when the tables get turned (and they do -- every last one of you healthy sods can be just as capable IF NOT MORE of assinine behavior AND self-exonerating denial on top of it -- at least we ferals ADMIT what we be!!) but for crying out loud do NOT judge us as having miraculous powers of insight and control that we don't have. at least see our affliction and our plight. and thank god or whatever YOU believe in that YOU don't have to be exhausted and worn thin 24/7 JUST trying to keep yourself from going SO far off the edge that you end up with a prison sentence.

From what I understand after having my own education process with a minor in Psychology, and after reading these refreshing articles, you are likely a psychopath if you can't feel compassion. Further, we live in a society that engenders psychopathy. Psychopathy is even more complex than these articles present. If you want revenge on a psycho and could care less about how they might feel about your vengeful ideas, then I would say you also are a psychopath. Perhaps not clinically, but your mimicking a psychopath. Your vengeful behavior is exactly the same as their careless disregard for you. People that cut us off on our drive to work feel totally justified and could care less if your kid is in the car. Anyways, I learned in therapy that its not about you, its about them. Its about whatever is irratating or agitating them. If you get irratated or agitated, then it becomes about you, so relax, take care of you and yours, slow down and be safe. Dont line up, get a credit card and pay for it online. Dont put yourself in situations where you can get burned. Take it from a psychopath in recovery.